


A Fool, A Jest

by coconutcluster



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, PET NAMES ALSO, and here we are, and started ramble-writing, angst angst angst, got so frustrated with the other thing i was writing, literally i just, very married-couple-ish, whoops, yeah theres some logicality in the second half of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 13:07:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16450529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coconutcluster/pseuds/coconutcluster
Summary: “A fool, a jest,” they sang, “an idiot in disguise, oh, what a horrid ruse."





	A Fool, A Jest

 Perhaps it was the lack of dinner, or the late night in spite of his usually-rigid schedule - maybe it was just the subtle on-and-off flickering of his dying desk lamp - but Logan felt ready to bang his head against the wall until the neighbors complained.

  (Technically, his only neighbor in the mindscape was Roman, but he had no doubt the prince would try and file a formal complaint to Thomas just to be- oh, what was the word- ‘extra’.)

  He’d spent hours - _hours_ \- in front of his laptop, staring at a blank document as if video plans would type themselves if he hoped hard enough (spoiler alert: they did not). His eyes had starting burning long ago, and his stomach went hollow soon after, but he just wanted one word, just _one_ , before he attended to his various other daily tasks.

  One word had failed to make its appearance.

  And so he’d sat, a prisoner at his desk, hands hovering over his keyboard uselessly, his frustrations growing as time went by- and _so much time_ had gone by. He just wanted to be done, and he hadn’t even started.

   _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ \- _just_ type _, Logan, move your hands, movemovemove-_

But his mind was a broken clock - stuck despite its gears’ best efforts to keep the hands shifting across its face, stuck on a twitching loop, stuck on one thing.

   _An all black room at first. Almost his bedroom, but too dark, too empty. Too noisy, with its incessant buzzing, just barely there in his ears, too much and too little all at once_.

  “Just _type_ ,” he muttered to himself, yet his hands refused to listen; he felt the pressure grow behind his tired eyes, either a headache or a wave of tears he was not willing to shed.

   _Footsteps, everywhere and nowhere. The buzzing stopped, replaced by a voice, then two, then three._

   He was so tired - a look at the clock showed a stiff 11:00, barely late at all, but paired with the last week of sporadic naps, it was an eternity. His mind had long since fogged up, to the point he couldn’t even remember if he’d left his room today. ( _Had_ he left? Had he eaten breakfast? Was that why he was so hungry?)

   _“The smart one_ , _” those voices sneered, “the genius. The fool.” Soft and sharp, hisses more than words, grotesque in his mind - but familiar. So, so familiar. “Genius. Ha!”_

His eyes fluttered closed for a second, but no, no, not now. He wouldn’t sleep, not until he had a word, or a paragraph, or a page. He wouldn’t sleep now. Just one word. (Had he eaten anything today? Water?)

   _What acidic things to hear in those voices. Logan, in his odd, disconnected self, flinched, reaching for a wall to brace himself on, but the room was no longer even a passing parody of his; he was just existent in the space, a bystander to its form as the biting remarks slithered closer. “A fool, a jest,” they sang, “an idiot in disguise, oh, what a horrid ruse. What an awful costume!”_

He’d distracted himself with books earlier - earlier in the week, that is - and it had worked, for a few days. When novels lost their effectiveness, he turned to dictionaries, then thesauruses, then anything with words that he could get his hands on, from old notebooks to shampoo bottles. They had worked! And then they didn’t.

  He could recite the every ingredient in the jar of Crofters in the fridge downstairs, but he couldn’t type one word.

   _He could drown out two of them; he could convince himself that they were joking, or they were lashing out and would apologize later, but_ that _voice pinched him too hard. That voice did not belong to those words. That voice belonged to coffee-scented mornings, to rainy afternoons on the porch with mugs of tea to warm the breeze, to breakfast for dinner, to disastrous maple cookies at midnight - it belonged to bright smiles and soft reassurances and kindness and encouragement and anything but this._

  One word, just one, to prove it to them, to their hisses and sneers and jeering sing-songs, that he was what Thomas needed him to be. He was enough for his position: objective, and observant, and _certainly_ not about to cry over a stupid blank document.

   _“Useless,” the golden voice sighed, practically preening, though Logan saw no one to accompany its tone. “What a shame. If he’d shown such disappointing…_ attributes _earlier, we might have been able to replace him in time.”_

His eyes were getting heavier, the tremble in his wrists stronger. One word. Just to prove it- prove _himself_ to them.

   _“Always correcting us,” the brittle voice said, low and quiet, too heavy for the quick-fire snaps. “Always judging, always criticizing - how would you like it, Logan? To know you’re_ always _wrong? You’re wrong, Logan. You’re_ broken _, Logan.”_

His stomach rumbled again, snapping his eyes open. His mind spun and a rush of heat wracked his body suddenly- he needed to sleep, but he would not close his eyes, not now and not for a while. His fingers curled into fists over the keyboard.

_Despite the tension in his shoulders and the bite of his nails in his palms, he could manage. He could stand strong against them - they were just comments, aimed to hit and bring him crumbling to the ground, and he wrote them off as mere nuisances._

  Just one word, and he could sleep then- he could convince himself he was satisfied. He could sleep then. But not until he got one word down.

 _But then, that voice, that awful amalgamation of what he knew, what he_ loved _,_ _and the twisted tones of his shadow room, whispered in his ear._

 _“How do you_ feel _, Logan?”_

He opened his eyes to knocking.

  It was a soft alarm at first, barely piercing the fog in his mind, until whoever was at his door decided to be a bit more insistent; it was far too loud for his aching head, but it forced the haziness from his thoughts enough for him to gather his bearings.

  He was curled on his side across the carpeted floor, fingers coiled in his hair and throbbing at the joints - he could just make out the shape of his glasses a few feet away, right next to his half-open laptop and a smattering of loose papers, which draped the pile like dead leaves.

  “Logan?”

  He flinched on instinct; his heartbeat slowed a second later as he reminded himself that this was his room, that was the voice he truly loved, not some shadowy reflection.

  “One minute,” he croaked, squeezing his eyes shut. How long had he been out? His computer was almost dead, so… a few hours, at least. Damn it.

  He crawled forward, grabbing his glasses - they were mostly fine, just a scratch across one of the frames, nothing he couldn’t ignore - and shoving them on, before grabbing the edge of his desk, hauling himself up with as little noise as possible. He ran a hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and strode to the door.

  “Patton,” he greeted- and froze a moment later.

  Patton’s eyes were wide, his face ashen and mouth set in a deep frown as he looked Logan over like he were a ghost. “Lo?” the moral side said, his tone laced with skepticism, “Are you okay?”

  Logan’s heart hammered again suddenly (what did he know?) - was he okay? Of course, of course he was okay, of course - and he reached absentmindedly for Patton’s hand, concern overriding his former panic and exhaustion. “Of course. Are _you_ alright? What’s wrong?”

  “You-” Patton blinked and squinted. He craned his neck, looking past the logical side suddenly, noticing the mess beside his desk. “It sounded like you were crying,” he mumbled, his eyes finding Logan’s again. “What happened?”

   _What happened, what happened_ … “Nothing. I just tripped,” Logan said. “I’m sorry to worry you, darl-”

  “Don’t lie to me, Lo.”

_How do you feel, Logan?_

  It was too sharp for Logan, especially from Patton and his honey voice, and he flinched, taking a step back into his room involuntarily in a staggering gait so unlike his usual stride. Patton’s eyes went wide again.

  “Logan?” the moral side gasped, “Lo, starlight, what’s wrong?”

   _A fool, a jest, an idiot in disguise._ His vision went spotty.

“Logan- sit down- take my hand, moonbeam, come on-”

  His head spun, pierced with whispers all too loud for his tired mind, but he felt Patton’s hand in his, leading him somewhere his eyes were too shadowed to see. His fingers found something soft - his comforter?

  “Okay, that’s a little better- can you hear me?” Patton’s voice was soft, and trembling ever-so-slightly. It was not a hiss, not a leering song, not a jeer; it was just Patton’s voice. Logan nodded. “Good, good. Can you talk?”

  He took a shaking breath and swallowed, though his throat was dry and burned with the possibility of words. “Yes,” he managed.

  He felt Patton’s grip tighten on his hand. “Okay- can you… can you tell me what’s goin’ on, Lo?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “ _Sorry_? For what?”

   _For what, for what_ … too many answers jumped out at him all at once. “I don’t know,” he breathed, curling his free hand into a fist once more - it stung, and when he looked down, he found bright red crescents in his palm. “Everything? For worrying you- for all of this- this mess- for being an _idiot_ -” _Idiot in disguise, what a horrid ruse_. His chest felt tight, filled with unshed tears and swallowed screams in the middle of the night.

  “Lo- breathe with me, ‘nilla bean,” Patton said, rubbing circles on the back of Logan’s hand, “in for four, hold for seven, out for eight- there you go- you’re not an idiot, Logan. Why do you think that?”

   _Think, think, think, why do you think-_

“I’ve been having nightmares.”

  Patton’s hand froze over his. “Nightmares?” the moral side repeated after a moment, brows low over his eyes. Logan nodded.

  “They’re these- these _voices_ , Patton, they’re like steam, and poison, and- that doesn’t even make sense-“

  “Yes, it does,” Patton assured him. “What do they say?”

   _Idiot, fool, jest, broken, wrong- How do you feel, Logan?_

Patton’s eyes went sad, and Logan took a second to realize his throat hurt again - he’d said it out loud. “How long have you been having them?” Patton whispered.

  “Two weeks.”

  The moral side took in a sharp breath beside him, fingers curling around Logan’s again, as if he’d disappear without the connection. “ _Lo_ \- why didn’t you tell us?”

  “I thought I could take care of it- I thought they’d go away after we met the last deadline, but they didn’t, so I thought if I kept working, they’d stop-“

  “Why would you need to keep working?”

  “To prove to them I can do my job!” he snapped.

  Regret flooded his mind a second later, and he forced another deep breath into his lungs - Patton just raised his eyebrows as he leaned back into Logan’s view, eyes shining. “Logan, honey, of _course_ you can do your job.”

  “But what if I _can’t_ ?” Patton frowned. “What if- what if I’m not as smart as you all need me to be? What if I disappoint Thomas when it matters most? What if I let stupid, _childish_ emotions get in the way of my performance and end up _ruining everything_ -”

  “Logan.” He snapped his gaze to the moral side - Patton’s brow was knit, his mouth set in a tight frown. “You are not going to ruin everything. You’re _scared_ \- you have a reason to be - and fear isn’t something you have to get over by yourself.” He held an arm out, a soft smile pulling at his lips; Logan’s gaze flickered between Patton’s eyes and hand, and he let out a sigh, scooting over into his embrace and leaning against him. The tears he’d been denying for weeks finally fell, and he made no move to swipe them away.

  “You don’t have to be smart to matter to us, Lo,” Patton continued quietly, combing a hand through Logan’s hair idly. “The fact that you are is just a plus.” Logan let out a dry chuckle. “Talk to me next time, please, if there is a next time.”

  Patton’s voice was soft again, that vanilla whisper Logan was so used to, and he felt the last of the panicked fog in his mind dissipate, if only for now. “I will.”

  They fell into silence, warm and comfortable. Logan’s eyes started to drift shut, and, for the first time in weeks, he dreamed of light.


End file.
